About us

Hi, My name is Farzana Rahman, and I am the founder of Desi Doll.

When my daughter Zahrah, was turning 3, and speaking English fluently, I felt the need to encourage her to speak my mother tongue, Urdu. Like many second generation parents in UK, I feel that it is important that our children have a good understanding of their language and culture.

Despite my efforts to speak with Zahrah in Urdu at home, I found it very difficult to maintain the discipline outside our home. Occasionally, grandparents would converse with Zahrah in Urdu, but even they reverted to speaking English, as they felt they would be better understood. In addition, apart from hearing Urdu at home, Zahrah seldom heard the language in other familiar environments, such as Nursery or Playgroups. I then realised that our mother tongue was rather alien to Zahrah. In a bid to tackle this issue, I searched around to find some "fun" and "intuitive" learning tools in Urdu. Not having any luck, I decided to invent my own product, that would familiarise and encourage my daughter to learn and speak her mother tongue, in a fun way.

3 years later, Desi Doll was born.

During the invention process, I realised that many of my friends (also parents) were experiencing the same dilemma, albeit for different languages, so I decided to expand the range to include a host of global languages.